Nestle faces lawsuit over bottled “spring water” source.
USA Today (12/14, McCoy, 1.71M) reports that Chicago Faucet Shoppe alleges in a “complaint filed Oct. 10 in Illinois federal court,” that Nestlé Waters North America failed to disclose the fact that five-gallon jugs of its “Ice Mountain spring water” actually come from “filtered municipal tap water.” USA Today notes that the class-action lawsuit in Illinois “alleges that Nestlé Waters violated a state consumer fraud statute.” Nestlé has “moved to dismiss the lawsuit, in part by arguing that FDA regulations for bottled water supersede state consumer laws.” However, a 2009 Government Accountability Office report “found that the federal law doesn’t specifically empower the FDA to require bottlers to report test results or use certified laboratories to conduct those tests.” The agency says “that hasn’t changed since the report.”
Cancer group urges FDA to bolster tanning bed oversight.
The Hill (12/14, Viebeck, 21K) “Healthwatch” blog reports that the “American Cancer Society (ACS) is urging federal officials to ‘impose greater control’ over the manufacture and distribution of tanning beds, citing an elevated risk of cancer from their use.” In a letter sent to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Thursday, the ACS alleges that for the past two years, HHS has been “ignoring the advice of an advisory panel that recommended action against tanning beds.” They are “not safe and not appropriately regulated,” ACS Deputy Chief Medical Officer Len Lichtenfeld, MD, wrote in the letter. He also noted that sunlamps “used for tanning are currently regulated by FDA as Class I medical devices” and urged the agency to “reclassify tanning beds to reflect what scientists see as a link between the devices and skin cancer.” American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network President Christopher Hansen also signed the letter.